Guest post by AMRITA NANDY
The math of this morality can be puzzling. Why should “sex worker mother” sound like an oxymoron to so many?
It was Mother’s Day recently – judgment time on who can be a mother, what makes a good mother. Time magazine’s provocative current cover shows a young Los Angeles mother breastfeeding her three year old son (standing on a stool to reach mommy’s breast) as the headline asks “Are you mom enough?” The accompanying article on “attachment parenting”, as put forward by “parenting expert” Bill Sears in his The Baby’s Book, encourages parents to keep their infants in constant bodily contact with the parent by wearing a baby sling, let their children wean themselves from the breast when they are ready and allow “co-sleeping” which aids a child to grow up to be well-adjusted adults.
Attachment parenting has been widely criticized for setting the bar for good parenting impossibly high, especially for parents who have to work full-time, but it is a bar quite easily reached by Radha – she is very “mom enough”. Amidst the din of the Delhi brothel where she works, she continues to suckle her four year old daughter. But if the judges of “good mothering” were policemen in Satara, Radha would not qualify. For them, a sex worker mother is a “shame”. This is why they dared to kick Anu Mokal, a four-months pregnant sex worker, leading to bleeding and an eventual miscarriage.
This outrageous act of violence cannot be condemned enough and it reeks of stale self-righteous ‘morality’ against sex work. For now, I will sidestep the long-held contentious debates on prostitution as violence/sex-work as work – including the nuanced, thoughtful positions adopted by feminists and the women’s rights movement. Instead, I will focus here on a particular role of the sex worker—as a mother.
The much-celebrated and cherished role of the Mother (problematically) epitomises a woman’s social identity and role as primarily reproductive and familial. Physically, emotionally and socially, it is a rite of passage, and a metamorphosis like no other. Yet, why should the promised glory of motherhood, its furry sentimentality, trappings of unconditional love and the mother-child friendship (fraught as it may be) bypass a sex worker? Why shouldn’t instead, the motherly aura polish the sullied image of the sex worker?
Is it the juxtaposition of (honourable) mothering and (sinful) sexuality that makes some good folk grimace? Do these seemingly oppositional activities coincide only in paid sexual acts? In the sharp words of a sex worker, “Women who have sex out of duty or submission are the ‘whores’”. If the moral currency of one’s vocation decides a woman’s right to reproduce, many others would come under the scanner…corrupt politicians, doctors who conduct sex-selective abortions and the whole shebang.
If motherhood is made of love, sacrifice, relentless work, relentless guilt and self-doubt among others, the sex worker mother scores as much as any “normal” mother. Like any busy, exhausted working mother, she is ever-anxious about her performance as a mother, wonders about what’s good and what’s enough for her child and works herself to the bone to do her best. All full-time working mothers, across class, spend hours away from kids and rely on help ranging from nannies to a circle comprising parents, siblings or neighbours to baby-sit their children, feed them, pick them from the aanganwadi/school. Unlike the ‘baby wearing’ commandments of attachment parenting theory that stress physical proximity with the child, working mothers do what is pragmatic and feasible.
Many children of sex workers at Delhi’s G. B. Road brothel, for example, study and live in boarding schools in and outside Delhi. Like any parent, they want their children to have a shot at education and thus a life different/better than their own. Among nuggets of gossip that floats in sex worker circles are those about the sacrifices and ‘successes’ of sex workers whose kids are now call centre employees, dance teachers, nurses.
To embed motherhood within a certain kind of marriage (heterosexual), a certain kind of relationship (monogamous), and a certain of family model (male breadwinner, female care giver) and project this as a blueprint for a ‘normal’ mother, marriage and family is not only untenable but also flawed. The shifting dynamics and reflexivities of human relationships, behaviours, roles and circumstances create myriad models. Besides, by the logic of one-size-fits-all motherhood, how does one judge adoptive mothers, egg donors and surrogate mothers? And who gets to play judge?
A sex worker’s identity gets reduced and nailed to her vocation, obscuring the many other roles she plays – mother, daughter, partner, friend. To make things worse, her child’s life is determined before it starts.
In the case of Anu Mokal’s child, even that life was brutally denied. The kick on her pregnant belly should be felt by all of us as a blow at our hypocrisies.
Amrita Nandy is a research scholar
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
“The kick on Anu Mokal’s pregnant belly should be felt by all of us as a blow at our hypocrisies.” is a very coorect statement by Amrita Nandy. we Indians particularly are a hypocrite lot in many other ways too. we do not even mean a lot of what we say we believe in. as for the case of mothers role and contribution we only make our women to goddesses, devi’s and then we do all sorts of horrible things to them. we burn them we sell them for petty sums to fufill our own needs and the like. but one thing i do want to put down here is that mohers are not automaticlly good persons, good teachers for their own or other’s children. they are like other human beings, their own socialisation makes them to good or bad human beings. and we have to unlearn a lot of nonsense and bad values inculcated by our mothers in us. for example my mother would say ‘o if a man other than my husband even touched me, i will go and want to kill myself.” she would not understand that girls/women now are going and filing an fir if a man has raped them or tried to exploit them sexually. i could never understand my mother in this attitude of hers. similarly there are many other examples where we cannot per say call mothers divine forces and just accept all they do nd/or say. but the case of sex workers being discriminated as mothers is different. we should repect their contribution to socety if they look after their children well, irrespective of the fact how they live and work themselves.
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As a child psychologist and a mom, one of the things that is so misleading about attachment parenting is the name. It is only called attachment parenting because of the theory it was based upon. It is not called this because it is the only form of parenting which allows parents to develop a secure attachment relationship with their children. There are numerous ways to develop a secure attachment relationship with our kids. I explore more of this myth here for anyone who is interested:
http://www.themommypsychologist.com/2012/04/15/what-does-the-mommy-psychologist-have-to-say-about-attachment-parenting/
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As a father, I feel that a person should be respected for being a person, a mom for being a mom, a child for being a child. As a son, I feel that respect for my own parents is a non-negotiable, regardless of their faults. The sex worker engages in work that is not healthy for her/him, children, even the people who victimize them. But to suggest that her/his kids be removed from their possession because of this environment is to deny the foundation of human relationships. We in India have a penchant for glorifying the ideal of the mother and in the real world denying the grace of motherhood (or fatherhood) by treating her with contempt.
For all we know, a kid growing up in a brothel under the nurture of a caring mother may be far more wise than those who are raised in safer surroundings with indifferent parental care. The world around us can be lonely, and those who make good relationships in it- be it that of a parent and child or simply 2 friends- are great people.
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What a wise reply John
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Excellent last line, Amrita. Agree with you on this post.
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I have wondered all my life about sex, ethics, right and wrong, sin and merit.
It is indisputably established by various sciences now that humans evolved from lesser primates, who evovled from reptiles, who in turn evolved from aquatic lifeforms.
In this extremely vast collection of species, each but a few reproduces through the sole means of sex.
In all but human society, sex is not limited to marriage between a single male and female.
Why would a God, who desired fidelity and purity in the end, use unrestricted sex as a means for reproduction for all but the very last of the 5 million *species*?
There is an important point though – all animals having mating seasons – most animals have females chasing males, unlike in humans, where mating season is all year round and males chase females.
The habit of sexual attraction, the mechanics of sex itself, are all ingrained in all humans from over a million years of evolution. It’s a very very long term habit.
And it’s the -only- way the race lives beyond the next 100 years.
The. only. way.
There is no known / documented / tried / experimented alternative to sex, for human reproduction.
I remember the dirty feeling I got when I first learnt about sex education in school and I looked very disgustedly at my parents and at all parents in general.
And, till 200 years ago, marriages often meant multiple wives for one husband.
What, then, is sin? What is dirty? What is pure?
I don’t know.
What we do do know is this: When you marry, you make a contract with your spouse-to-be that you will only ever have sex with her and no one else.
This needs to be respected or else it is breach of trust and contract.
But what about people who are not married?
Do they sin if they have sex?
Sex work comes under this question.
And what about marriages where other terms are written into the contract?
Does sex work come under this?
What about women who are ugly and poor and otherwise not attractive enough to attract mates? Who marries them out of love? Does this guarantee fidelity?
And what is the correct punishment of infidelity?
The balance between attraction and fulfilling promises is critical to the definition of purity / sin.
There was a time in the past of our race that the entire population of homo sapiens was 10,000 individuals. What if those 10,000 had been completely pure and strict about fidelity?
Maybe in the future science can isolate genes among us that prove that we came from incestuous ancestors. What then? Are we all descendants of sex workers?
Even more shocking are examples from the Mahabharata:
Pandu, Dhrutrashta and Vidur had one father – Maharishi Vyas – who fathered them all – with different mothers. Was it some magic unknown to mankind or was it a sex act?
Finally we have Draupadi, married to 5 men and Ghatotkach, illegitimate son of Bhima and a “demoness”.
Where is our purity sense and religion in all this?
Why dont we call them all “prostitute children”?
Why do we praise and celebrate the Pandavas?
My personal explanation is pretty scientific – they were people, they made bad decisions, shit happens, and so you should only learn from people’s lives and move on.
Finally we come to the questions with clear answers:
Jesus said: Hate the sin, not the sinner.
and He also said: Judge not for ye shall be judged too.
What right does “society” get to incriminate sex work when society does not provide for welfare and alternative professions for women without men to protect them?
Every sex worker out there is proof that each of us did not contribute to her education, her getting a sustainable vocation.
Why dont we get punished for not doing our part?
Are we still pure if we dont care for those women, and just sit judging them?
How many “pure people” have talked to a sex worker and asked her if they could help her get another job, rather than doing the dirty deed day in and day out for a living?
I think what we witness today in the media – excessive sleaze and pornography – is a logical backlash or result of ignoring the plight of sex workers.
If all women got “clean” jobs, nobody would ever be able to produce pronography and fashion models would not show skin – they would sue fashion photographers who asked them to expose skin.
We would be busy admiring cloth designs and creativity in fabrics and designs, rather than ogling mindlessly at skimpily dressed women.
Unless we fix that end, this end wont go away.
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Reblogged this on Writings from a woman of pleasure and commented:
An old post already…but a very bright one :)
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This is a very moving post. I am so sorry that this happened. Sex work is a job, and men (the main client base) should be grateful it is there at all. Motherhood is part of who we integrally are. I always feel a bit sick inside when is see that a woman has been hurt like this. I am really sorry about it, and I wonder if there is not something in men that makes it like this. It really worries me….kindness and respect is all we should have for each other, and if we do not feel that towards a person, we should simply move away. And then those that are friends and do care can be there for the occasion of birth, an occasion we still all find joyous….
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